Just Jean

Just Jean is one woman's life journey in this world. These brief essays speak about the ordinary magic of everyday life and people. During our life journey there are an infinite number of chance meetings that impact our life forever. These are opportunities to connect deeply to our common humanity both fearlessly and daringly. Basic goodness is available to us all. There is always a fresh moment waiting in the next breath to press the reset button and begin again, to love again.

Jean Marie Gunner

We are all basically good.

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

We can look
at life from a deficit point of view, or from one of abundance, of basic goodness.
I choose to lead this essay with that fundamental view because there are many
people in my life who inspire this mindset of abundant goodness and one in
particular, my kind and good humored boyfriend, Joe, just a regular and
extraordinary guy.

We are in
the middle of a very large weather event, the snowstorm of the century, of
indeed my lifetime. I have lived nearly half a
century and I have never experienced this much snow fall in such a short duration
of time. I am sure everyone in this lake effect snow
band are all experiencing many similar feelings. The constant shaking of snowflakes from what
seemed to be a gigantic flour mill above our heads for miles and miles unearthed a
lot of feelings within me. Even though, I
could only feel my own feelings and think my own thoughts, somehow I felt
connected to a mind stream that ran many miles in every direction from my
little point in this world, my mind, my home, my family, my tiny spot in
this village of Hamburg neighborhood.

Yesterday morning
around 9 a.m., my teenage sons and I began clearing out three feet of heavy
snow which consisted of one foot at the base of hard-packed and frozen snow. My eldest son gallantly maneuvered and heaved
the snow blower with the sheer will and force of his young muscles through this hard and
wet snow up and down the length of an over hundred foot driveway. My younger son and I shoveled methodically to
assist, cutting and picking up large chunks of snow to heave into an already snow-filled back yard. I knew we needed
additional assistance so I called their dad who thankfully lives just a few
blocks away. We spent the entire morning as a family clearing the snow, with me taking an hour break to prepare a hearty breakfast for the
guys. Yesterday, during the second round of snow clearing late in the
afternoon, I began to feel very stuck, my stomach was tightening and my heart
was racing. I was wondering if I was
capable of handling all this stuckness, this feeling of being trapped in all
this snow around me. I became curious
about this feeling since I have always loved winter and the snow and the sense of
being blanketed by the snow cover. But
with a driving ban and the continuous nature of the flour mill at work above
our heads as the storm just kept shaking fine powdered snow on our world, I
began to resist the conditions I was finding myself in. I felt panic and separation and I wanted
there to be another reality. I missed
being able to just get in my car and go somewhere, anywhere.

All it took
was one phone conversation with my boyfriend to clear my mind of doubt and to
look at the situation from another perspective.
Joe and I kept in touch all day and this made the situation we were in feel much more workable, even fun and joyful.
I appreciate the way my boyfriend looks at winter and snowfall and snow
clearing. He has a potently, positive view
and it is infectious to hear him speak in this way. In a sense, he is just so straight forward and does not make a big deal of anything. It was an extraordinary weather event to be sure, and exciting and incredible, and he approaches it with an ordinary view point and an attitude of simply what needs to be done. Refreshingly, I never hear him complain and he actually enjoys the experience. He is entirely immersed and engaged in the
present situation of the moment. He relates
to snow removal with an attitude of pride and duty peppered with a sense of
challenge and a mindset of accomplishment.
I realized I was missing and longing for being near him,
experiencing this big thing with him, close to him. Since we were not in the same
location, I could either resist the present set of conditions and circumstances
(our physical separateness) and indulge in my longing to being with him and
resulting sadness, or I could experience this big weather event where I
was and with whom I was. The latter brought me more
happiness, so that is what I chose. Joe helped me and I felt joy in my present situation as it was.

After the uplifting
phone call with Joe, I returned outside with my youngest son, Aidan. It was early evening and we ditched the shovels
and he said to me, ‘C’mon mom, let’s play!’ Not often does my 14 year old choose to hang with mom over skyping friends online.
This was my chance to let go of my feelings of entrapment which were causing me so
much anxiety, and instead fall into to enjoying the four feet of white stuff surrounding our
home and comprising our world in that moment.
We both laid down on the the cushion of pure white soft coldness and
looked up at the gray evening sky, and I immediately noticed the few golden-brown leaves left on the Norway
Maple silhouetted by the last vestiges of evening light, right in front of us. We breathed and let our hearts be there lying
next to one another. We then trekked out
in the village to explore and witness the storm’s impact on the neighborhood. We met some neighbors trying to dig out along our winter wonderland walk.

We tried to
make it to our wooden playground but the thigh high snow did not allow for easy
passage. We gave up and turned around to
visit Aidan’s dad. When a front loader
was barreling down the street, we ran for cover on the side so we didn’t get run
down. We had fun running down the snow
covered streets and slipping on ice beneath the tracks that the machine had
left for us in its wake. We then arrived
home and peeled off snowy frozen winter outerwear, left strewn about, which I promptly
placed upon our floor heating vents in our 1928 old home, another
thing for which I offer thanks and feel the goodness that is.

On we went all
day, although I found time to bake some homemade treats of pumpkin cookies and
chocolate banana bread. All told we
spent, with four of us clearing snow that just kept shaking from the sky and
piling up in the driveway, eleven hours between us. It was not easy, my muscles in my back and
shoulders and arms today are reminders of the hard work from yesterday. By the day’s end, I knew I would appreciate
some strong medicine that would calm down my aching muscles, so I mixed up a medicinal
Whiskey Sour, chilled and shaken. Between
exercise and a walk and a Whiskey Sour, I slept well.

Upon
awakening at 5:00 a.m. this morning, I looked through a clearing on the snow matted
screened bathroom window to see a sliver of a moon, a bright silver crescent
like a beacon in a dark early morning sky.
The sky was quiet and serene, my heart feeling the same. When I
awoke again, the clouds from the day before were gone, the massive powerful
lake effect system had shifted and the sun was just rising on a magical world,
quiet and just waking up. I feel as if I
were seeing the sun in a new way, with such precision, for the first time in my
life. I feel awakened and touched with
the promise of a new day, another chance to be alive. I feel
the good and genuine love that has touched my life this year through the beginning of a new
relationship. I feel a sense of coming
home to my own heart while touching the heart of another. I feel the gratitude of having witnessed the
maturity and wisdom of my teenage sons as they grow up and out into the world
and take care of things. I feel a sense
of forgiveness for the hurts caused by and toward me. I feel that no moment is too small to pay
attention to and that all moments add up to a day in my life that adds up to a
lifetime. I feel and realize that chances
are handed to us over and over to really engage in our lives and to reach out
to the world and others in it with open hearts.
I truly feel appreciation for everything and one in my life, including
minor and major annoyances, since they all remind me of my aliveness.

Returning to
the way I began this essay, with a choice between a mindset of deficit versus
abundance, I realize that I have the ability to pick up the phone and call someone,
or text, and share experiences, that there is really no separation, it is only
how we choose to think of our particular situation in the moment. Also, I am surrounded by others, friends,
family and neighbors, even strangers, and we are all in this together. And, I feel gratitude for the abundance in my
life, my children, my wonderful boyfriend with such a genuinely good and positive
outlook, my friends and neighbors and family, my snow blower, gasoline, shovels, a kind and generous ex-husband,
heat and electric, food in the refrigerator, my sense of humor, Facebook. There is so much in our world when we notice
the abundant goodness.

Tuesday, the
snow day, helped me reflect on how very appreciative I am for my
situation. I have a very good life, and
I am grateful. When the panic set in
yesterday, I was reminded by so many in my life and the natural world around me to stay present, to relax into
the moment, to surrender and to keep moving forward. And the sun today reminded me that that the
storm will end and the sun will keep on rising and shining.

Thursday, July 3, 2014

The moon over ManhattanThis is your realityI just require a road mapAn emotional pictureA sense of directionFor what's happening to meExplain to me that chemical reaction When we connect with another human beingWhen we Fall in loveWe take ourselves up to the top of the mountainThen, knowingly, hurdle ourselves offTrusting the free fallThe sensation of floating downwardAll the while plummeting to the bottomThe rock solid ground belowHere in this busy city of movementFrenetic energy unleashedThe pace is hyper-speedAll I can do is think of youAnd continue this fall

Saturday, October 5, 2013

All of life, every single moment offers a choice to be fully
present and on the spot.Each breath is
a leap of faith.Every moment and every breath
of our life have two things intimately in common; they are all beginnings and
endings, births and deaths.Each moment
we continue on, we are counting on a world to embrace us to hold us to support
us to hold us, and the expression, “Place the fearful mind in the cradle of
loving kindness,” may seem like an easy thing to say or something that makes no
sense because the world may feel too aggressive and on fire and testy and
speedy.How can we rely on this? Why do
we so resist this?However, taking just
a single moment.To pause.To stop.To take a breath.To feel the in
breath as the ever present supply of oxygen nourishes all of our insides moving
out to our limbs and feeding each and every last cell in our bodies.

Each summer my sons and I give ourselves a gift of eight days
full of moments to simply be.We travel to northeastern Vermont to a retreat center, Karma Choling,
and experience with 220 others adults and children what it feels to live in an
enlightened way.Society or community begins with two people.And when each
person is relatively aware of their own mind and heart and being, the
relationship can be rich and supportive and open.

This is what the family camp experience is built upon.Some camp in tents, some stay in the lodge,
some of the teens stay together each night in what they call the “Pav.”This was our third summer camp experience and
the first year my eldest son did not stay in our family tent pitched in the
upper meadow on the mountainside.I am
not sure I ever even thought to miss him.I knew he was doing exactly his own thing.Being his own self and having his own camp
experience.

And this gave me and my younger son, who is twelve and a half, open
space to just be together.Just a
sentence or two about the condition of my heart this past summer.I had just experienced an ending of a relationship.I felt like a bird with a broken wing.Beginning the camp experience crying my eyes
out, I was clinging to an idea or wish that the other person would do what I
thought he needed to do to make himself available to me. This was a view
that was simply creating more internal suffering for me.So after about three days of intense
suffering, I let my camp friends know that I was hurting, and I let the love in
the meditation room, in the camp and in the teachings hold me like a newborn
babe as I cried my heart whole again.

By day four, with eyes red and swollen, and a heart broken
but still beating, I was ready to be at camp, to open my heart no matter how
broken and battered it felt.

On this same day, five parents and more than ten teenage and
tween age kids carpooled over to the notorious train bridge jumping spot. It was a quintessential snapshot moment of Americana, a placid lazy
Vermont river, an old last century train bridge, and ten teens and tweens
standing on the edge of the train trestle poised but not quite ready to
jump.

Six girls and four boys stood on the precipice taking their
time before their leap to the cool water below on an early August summer camp
afternoon.The parents waited on the
river’s shore gazing up at our children aware of their tentativeness as they
considered their jump.And at some
point, one of us, or perhaps collectively, we heard a train’s distinct whistle
as it chugged its engine and cars down the track straight toward our children
on the very bridge it would be traversing in less than a minute.We awoke to the sound and snapped to paying
attention to the reality of the present moment.Our children stood, ostensibly oblivious, on the edge of the bridge’s
train track in the path of this approaching train.The moms were the first to react shouting up
in our higher pitch voices “Jump.” “Jump.” Jump!”Finally one of the dads, in his deep baritone
voice, hollered the definitive “JUMP!” followed by a resounding chorus and
urgent appeal of all the parental voices, “JUMP!!!”

There was no mistaking the on the spot urgency of the adults
below, and, as if on cue, the children began to throw their young bodies from
the bridge.It could not have been
choreographed more elegantly.As if a
scene from the 1980s coming of age film, “Stand by Me,” first one, then two,
then all plummeting into the river below.Not one remained atop that bridge as the train chugged over that same
bridge our children had just been standing only moments before.One by one they swam over to the shore.Reflecting back, not one of our youth froze
and panicked.They were all ready to
react as the situation called for, being “on the spot” so to speak.That “Stand by Me Moment” is indelibly
inscribed I am certain on all the moms and dads standing on that river’s edge in
the warmth and light of that sweet August afternoon.What can that moment offer us in the way of a
life teaching, of being poised and ready in our day to day lives of taking an authentic, on the spot leap of faith?

September brings crisp definition to life.Even as life begins its transformation, its
descent into and toward death, the sun continues to warm the inhabitants of
this northern hemisphere of earth.I
ride along the same route, with my eldest son, who is now a go-pro photographer
with his own You Tube channel, and posting with the appropriate hash tag to get
his work noticed.

We ride, he shoots video, and I steadily quiet inside myself.My good calm mind watches the clouds pass,
the leaves come away from their branches which they have hung onto all summer
long, and my thoughts and feelings and emotions are as effervescent and
fleeting as everything in this preciously and reliably impermanent world of
ours.There is relief in that
realization.There is also a mix of sadness
and joy.

Just as in love, which is as dependably impermanent as all of
it, there is the resonant pain and pleasure.This year brought so much to light for me, and uncovered a groundless
strength inside of me that is ageless and reliable.I have come to realize the profound truth of
living in the impermanence of the moment -- even if love turns to pain,
remember it started out as love.And
when it comes to love, there is small mind love and there is vast love, true
love.That is the love that remains, the
love that always was, and the infinite goodness that connects us to the All.That reminds us of our universal connection,
that our separateness is only a perception. And that perception can be mighty
convincing for sure at times.

When we decide to love another, when all the stars align to
bring two humans together, and they find there is chemistry, as well as a karmic
connection, the sparks fly and the only thing for certain is that it will
continue on until it is over.

Loving is for certain about taking a leap of faith.I like to think of the many loves in my life
and how they have enriched my existence.There are small loves and big loves, and they are all pearls on the
bracelet of my life.In love we
experience both joy and pain.Whether
intentional or not, when someone hurts us, we experience so many emotions.Some of these emotions seem to happen
simultaneously, but actually what is happening is a firing of reactions within
our mind.I know what goes on for me is
this.I start to fixate on dates and
sequence of events when things are beginning to fall apart in a relationship.The memories of the relationship and time
spent together start jumping back in to my mind. I sequence the events together
trying to make sense of the pain I am feeling by remembering exact dates and days
and hours even.I am not sure if this is
a coping mechanism or just a part of the way my logic or proclivity to make
sense of the world mathematically manifests itself as I go through the struggle
to unhook emotionally from someone.Observing, noticing, becoming aware can help me make sense of the
difficulty I am encountering, and actually move through the pain.I have learned that leaning in to the
difficult emotions actually speeds up the healing process, and this is good.

Here is what I know. I have experienced a few big heartbreaks
in my life.There were some smaller
ones, some moments or time periods of panic thinking that I couldn’t make it
alone, that I was being abandoned.Thankfully somewhere along the line, in space, in my life, I realized I
was on a good path, and that working with my mind was not only an option but a
necessity.

This summer which I have cleverly labeled the “summer of my
discontent,” I ended a relationship.It
was a big heartbreak.A hunch I had, a
suspicion I carried and was expressed in the way my body felt, was confirmed
and I felt broken when the truth was revealed about the deception within the
relationship.I felt like a damaged
bird.In fact my broken wing was not
only symbolic and emotional, it manifested physically.My body has been healing from an injury of my
left shoulder blade and neck and back.My
story offers a quality of redemption and resilience, since this is not a story
of a victim, but of an alive warrior in this world. I know now that when we
experience moments of profound pain, that if we can meet these moments with an
openness, even one that feels as if it might break us, then unconditional
confidence and gentleness and boundless compassion for ourselves is available
and will help us move through any heartbreak.Just consider for a moment the human stories that have moved you the
most in your life.These great struggles
of human suffering that, when met with grace and truth and complete honesty, are
the stories of human resilience and true bravery of the heart.

True bravery is when we feel suffering and we are in pain, and
are able to meet it, feel it in our body and do not try to either run away or
repress it or lash back.It is when we
stand resolute in our human moment of whatever we are experiencing, having a
trust in the knowing that the storm will blow over eventually.The awareness that just like every cloud that
has ever formed in the sky above has for time immemorial dissolved into open
blue sky and that we can rely on that and let it hold and comfort us.We are all living in space and time, and the
passage of a stream of moments will bring relief and the sun is still shining
even behind the storm clouds.

When my heart broke this summer, I cried, the tears flowed
and flowed and I did not try to stop them.I let the dam break and the water crest over some emotional levy.And remembering past heartbreaks that I had
weathered, I knew and trusted that the deep achy dry pain would pass if I
really allowed myself to feel, to feel and not be awkward or embarrassed about
any of it. This was the kindest thing I could offer myself.

In love and the decision to love again, we must take a leap
of faith full well knowing that pain and heartbreak are a component in the love
equation.True love lasts though even
when the relationship is over.It is the
love we offered and put out into the world.The opening of our heart and offering of love to another, to the world,
is healing.It heals the deep brokenness
that has defined our world for millennia.But there is a slow and steady growing awareness that the world is
changing, the world and the people in it are waking up.And awakened beings have a responsibility to
stay awake, and just by being awake make a difference as a noticeable radiance is
emitted into the world.We don’t need to
talk too much about it, just be this radiant open goodness.Trust and follow in this openness, just like
a flower is first a seed then growing to a beautiful fragrant lovely colorful being,
it moves the world and the heart just by being what it is at its core.

I realized as I rode these country roads through the end of
summer crisp evening air with my lovely teenage son, that we are all called to
be part of a team.I see us as a team of
humanity at this moment on earth.And I
realize that loving and being open to loving again is who I am.It is my essence, it is the way I impact and
change my world.I love. That’s what I
offer, love. And that it is not so much
as what we know about another as it is about how we feel with another.Loving others and finding out more about me
is just the way I interact and experience my world.I may be more aware after this experience of
my last heartbreak, I may be more patient and pay more attention and listen
more acutely and spaciously to myself, but I will open myself and heart again
since I know no other way to deeply experience this good world of ours.

Friday, July 19, 2013

I sit here in the backyard of my village home on a mid-July
morning.Tibetan prayer flags sway to
the morning breezes coming from the east.The sun has long since risen and the neighbor children are at play
gathering sticks, as I can see through the little opening between our yards.

Some sort of fatigue has set in and my mind and body need a
shift.Since I cannot go away to counter
this depression, I have decided to move my bedroom outside into my own village
backyard.My tent that has an open net
roof is now my bedroom.I had fallen
asleep to the setting quarter moon last night and awoken to the chorus of dawn
birds serenading me with trill and chirps and one rather incessant crow who
flew away in a tizzy early this morning.

I had not been sleeping well for months and my mind would
awaken me most nights sick with worry and negative thinking.My emotional self has been in turmoil and I
am aware of why this is.It is the
attachment and fixation I have to particular outcomes, to a driving need to
wanting something to be different, to my worrying about "why" all the time.If the why could dissolve into the next
moment and just be another fleeting thought, oh that’s right, that is what it
is.I have come to realize that the responsibility
of my house is overwhelming on my own, as the only adult here responsible for
its maintenance.We aren’t really
designed to do it on our own, to raise families alone, or care for homes alone;
we are social beings and live in community, so thinking we are the whole team
that needs to do it all is really driven by fear, a need to control, and
reliance on this cowboy mentality in our country of a supreme independence
mindset.What’s wrong with being
dependent on someone or something, since we are at every living minute
dependent on this lovely earth, the air we breathe, the sun beating down on us
and each other living being.

What actions
have I taken to shift this negative mindset?Which causes and conditions have I pressed the reset button on to make
my life and my good mind and my raw heart more aligned with the basic goodness
that I know is the foundation of my existence? I have decided to downsize my
bedroom to a small open air tent and lay down each night on the earth and gaze
up at the vast open sky. To let nature and the natural good world have a crack
at healing the raw woundedness I feel.And frankly I don’t want to repress the open wound but I also don’t want
to go around oozing it into the world of my family and friends and
colleagues.It is my responsibility to
take some action to heal and rejoin the fractures I feel, but first I must feel
them and feel them I will.I am being
reconstructed as I lay upon the earth each night as I sleep like I am in a
cave with less worry and anxiety.My
panic is not taking me over awakening me in the middle of the dark night.Instead, I am being cradled by something
older than me and my wisdom has led me to this place of healing in my own
backyard.No one will probably ever love
me enough to fill up that hole; onIy my own inner wisdom will hold me through
all this living, breathing struggle.

I have a
view about the difficulty that I have encountered.I am aware that we are not alone, we are part
of a team, we don’t need to cover all the bases our self.They don’t do that in sports games, so why
would we think we have to do this in our own lives?We are part of families and neighborhoods and
work communities.Some of us are even
blessed enough to have loving supportive partners and spouses.Love is bigger than all the fear in the
world.Kindness is the remedy for
aggression.When we are angry with
someone, we could try opening to our kind hearts to love that person without thoughts, we might try prying open our tender heart even if it feels broken and brittle and little like the Grinch's and let a little bit of the serum
of compassion pour out. Funny, then we feel suddenly more connected and tuned in to the other.And our beloved helps us feel our own hearts
of basic goodness, our own sorrows and our own joys.

And in
relationships we just have to have these difficult experiences to get to know each other
and our self with the other.And, there
may always be a theoretical better someone out there for each of us, but for my part, I am tired of shopping and I could
just use a break from all the mental struggle with my own need to control outcomes,
secure love, be safe, and be protected. My attachment to being attached causes
me great pain, yet we as humans are attached by that visceral broth of
humanness and interdependence that this human flesh requires us to be.I see that it is not so much attachment to
the person in the end as it is to wanting that person to be a certain way, to want the relationship
to be a certain way. How
liberating and loving if I might just let go a little more to let the person
love me either the way he does or doesn’t?

This ongoing
struggle with wishing for a particular outcome, an afterward, that hasn’t
happened yet, and fearing it never will be, is just a reality that I am now feeling and I
had to take matters into my own hands and change my causes and conditions.I had to find a medicine that would heal
me.I had to let the earth cradle me in
loving kindness.I need to trust the
world enough to let it embrace me, to heal me, to embody the qualities that I
aspire to be for my world and heal something deep within me that has bubbled up
and will not go away until I feel it.As
a mom and member of my family, I couldn’t go on an away retreat so I brought
the retreat to me each night.

This all takes
kindness, gentleness and courage, and I find out time and time again that I
have all those qualities, and it takes a visit by the bluebird of
happiness of my own basically good backyard to just let it all be even if it means falling apart.

Monday, July 15, 2013

When there
is summer and there is no wind it feels like 1000 degrees.Today is exactly one of those humid summer
days where the air feels close.Where
our skin feels like it is melting into space and that there really is no space
between our body and what always seemed like space before.It is as if we are swimming in a summer soup
of body and hair and skin and air and space and room.Room.

Now I will
say I am drinking a Lemon Drop Martini made with fresh berries and squeezed
lemons and Mango Vodka (purchased at the Duty Free in Saint Kitts in the Lesser
Antilles where I was conveniently stranded during an early February snow storm this
winter) and Triple Sec.All perfectly
shaken and chilled with lots of ice on this close hot sultry summer evening in
Western New York in early July.

I just finished a seven mile bike ride with my eldest son who
is now 15 and a High School Sophomore in September.I don’t actually think about how much I love
these rides with him and our conversations, but now that I am writing this
essay I realize how grateful I am for the ease of our communication as we both
face forward riding into the summer air on this July day.We just start talking to each other freely
without agenda.My usual worries and
concerns which may very well seem like a rant to him at times, as they ought to, since he has had some serious lapses in judgment where school was concerned his
first year in high school – the transition and high school learning curve was
quite steep and I am still mystified on how a boy of his high
intelligence could let good grades slip through his proverbial high school
fingertips.Despite all this, mom and
son ride into space facing forward and the words just flow.

I do confide in my eldest son quite a bit I
think because I don’t have a partner living with me.I lean on him like I might a husband at least
as far as figuring out certain household issues or other life matters are
concerned. And he is deliberate in his thinking and analysis and very
considerate in his responses.

Our conversation this evening orbited around creation versus
evolution.Recently he said to me during
a rather difficult week of my life mainly having to do with the one I love
needing space and me needing closeness.Funny how someone we love saying they need space suddenly equates in our
mind to ‘I don’t love you anymore.’We
may feel so confident in one moment, and then we feel deflated, and even worse,
completely unlovable and worthless when the one we love turns away from us even
if for a day or week.Our ego can so
fixate and cling to the other as if all the oxygen we ever needed is being
provided by that one alone.I said to
Kailen even this evening that there are three people in my life right now that
if something happened to them and they were taken away from my life that I
would feel I could not live without them.Kailen said, “Well mom that tells if you are really in love with
someone.It is the In Love Litmus Test.”And as we rode on through space I thought to
myself about that for a moment.And I
said but I know I love so many other people but could somehow live on without
them and how is that possible.I then became
aware that it is because of the clinging my mind and heart have to those
three.I am fixed on them like they are
my true north.And that may be the
definition of true love but it is also the definition of fixation.We both agreed and rode on.

So as we moved through space so did our dialogue.Kailen has shared a little secret about
deliberate contemplative conversation.Sometimes
he has an idea he is formulating and he decides not to share until the idea or
concept has gelled in his own mind.I
often thought if a man I loved held something from me he was holding his love
from me.It took years, really decades
to realize that it is a sign of intelligence to give some consideration to
thoughts or feelings and how to express them cogently in words before just
simply spewing them forth. Or, it is just a different way, equally good. And that I,
too, have held back when I wasn’t sure how to quite put something out there
into the world.Now sometimes it is
courageous to wait and sometimes courageous to deliver the message on the spot.It is a matter of discernment.And you can be sure that we will not always
get it right and that is okay.

We sort of blended the idea of creationism and evolution into
a radical idea that probably neither camp would be too crazy about, neither the
scientists nor the dogmatic believers would accept as a possible scenario.There seems to be a gap in the evolution
scenario somewhere between the hominids of the Neanderthals and the homosapiens
and this, from the standpoint evolutionary biology, has not been bridged or
reconciled.What if there was a creator
and that creator was simply a more intelligent life form from somewhere off in the
cosmos, the great vastness of space beyond our planet but not beyond our own
minds?Our ride ended with that thought and I poured myself a martini and continued sitting in the quiet of this stunningly close July evening.

About Me

Just Jean: Musings of a 21st Century Woman

It has been a long time that I have wished to share myself through writing about the ordinary magic of everyday life --the daily life I witness and of which I am deeply a part. There comes a point in one's life that it is truly now or never. I have arrived at that point. I bravely and gently offer these musings to the world I inhabit. I am Just Jean.